


A Friend in Need

by meguri_aite



Category: Thunderbolt Fantasy 東離劍遊紀 (TV)
Genre: M/M, sex pollen comedy is a legit genre i say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:55:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21851041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meguri_aite/pseuds/meguri_aite
Summary: Even a magically induced sex frenzy could not stop the man from lecturing with overwhelming verbosity and insincerity.
Relationships: Rin Setsu A | Lǐn Xuě Yā/Sho Fu Kan | Shāng Bù Huàn
Comments: 16
Kudos: 33
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Friend in Need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Himmelreich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himmelreich/gifts).



When Rin Setsu A failed to return by the sunset, Shou prepared to have a really nice, relaxing evening.

He stretched across the sun-warmed stones, sipped at his pleasantly tart herbal infusion, and sighed in contentment.

“In this moment, it doesn’t even bother me that I don’t know what to do with you,” he said to the bundle at his left. The bundle rustled and chimed at him melodiously, perking up at the attention and threatening to shed its rough canvas wrapping like a flower going into bloom. If flowers were particularly unwieldy, spiky and sharp tools of violence, which they thankfully weren’t. Shou leaned to cover and tie it up firmly again, and carefully laid the bundle back down.

Seven Piercing Songs did not like to stay silent and invisible, much like someone else Shou could name. According to the rumours, it was a legendary sword of demon-slaying kings of the past, but Shou generally found rumors to be too excitable on the subject of magical swords. All this fuss, and Seven Piercing Songs barely even looked like a sword. More than anything, it was a temperamental musical box on a skewer, its heavy decorated hilt barely balancing out its weight. Shou doubted it had managed much actual demon-slaying before becoming a local legend. Unless one wielded it as a noisy cudgel, perhaps.

Still, it was better off with him than in the hands of the Ro village elders, who were a little too fond of ritual human sacrifice for comfort. His back still itched from paralyzing arrows of their crazy warrior priests. Gods only knew what they’d dabbed their weapons in, it was a miracle his wounds hadn’t festered. 

Well, a miracle and a timely offered antidote. Surreptitiously, Shou touched his bandages, took another gulp of his herbal remedy, and told himself to think happy thoughts for the sake of better ki flow.

It was a happy thought that, right there and then, he didn’t have to deal with cultist villagers or anyone equally bothersome. The approaching evening was balmy and serene, the landscape around him blissfully empty, and he was going to count his blessings while they lasted.

Shou was going to take a nap.

“Not bothered one bit,” me murmured and closed his eyes.

His sleep was fitful, interrupted by visions of singing swords, flying feathers, smoke screens, and a needling feeling that he was forgetting some tedious but unavoidable chore. Cursing under his breath, Shou rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up. 

The sky was a watery blue marked with the pinpricks of first stars. His annoying companion was still not back.

“Perhaps he found someone new to pester,” he said, without much hope. “Or fell into a ditch.”

The thought didn’t cheer him as much as he’d hoped. Rin had wandered off on some whimsical quest of his own, heading back in the direction they’d come from. Shou hadn't questioned him, because he was not interested. He had been planning to stay put for a few hours and let the ki work on his recent injuries, anyway.

“I don’t care about his whereabouts,” he said. Seven Piercing Songs, which had managed to wiggle out of its wrapping again, chimed agreeably. So much for being non-sentient and probably not a sword, Shou sighed. The silver strings pulled tight along the blade glimmered like a cobweb after the rain, promising more unsolicited noise. The damn thing didn’t even want to get into his index and make itself more portable, if not useful. 

Not for the first time, Shou wished for a different companion. Rou Fu Yo, for example, would have jumped at the chance to take this thing off his hands and spare him the headache. The damn bird wasn’t so obliging. Come to think of it, this time around Rin hadn’t even bothered offering an excuse as to why he was tagging along.

“I hope he took a wrong turn and is well on his way to Seiyou now,” Shou said, heartfelt, wrapped Seven Piercing Songs tightly again, and hobbled back down the road he’d come from.

An hour of walking at an increasingly brisk pace later, Shou learnt that Seiyou would be safe from Rin Setsu A for a while longer. 

Spread on his colorful silks under a massive willow tree, Rin lay limp and pale like the world’s most overdressed corpse.

“What do you think you are doing here?” Shou growled, crossing the remaining distance. He dropped his things to grab Rin by his shoulders. “Enjoying your beauty sleep?”

Rin let out a groan, eyelashes fluttering but not lifting. Shou quickly inspected him for injuries, but didn’t spot anything life-threatening. He wouldn’t put it past Rin to be dramatic about interrupted sleep, but --

“Look at me,” he commanded. He plunged a hand into a cloud of feathers and fine white hairs surrounding the man, found the nape of Rin’s neck and tilted it up. Snapping fingers in front of Rin’s eyes elicited a small groan, but not much else. Rin was unnaturally hot under the touch, too. His own ki activity levels usually meant that Shou was running at a higher temperature than most people, yet Rin’s face was burning under Shou’s hand.

With another plaintive noise, Rin at last opened his eyes, unfocused and black nearly to the rim of his iris. “The noble hero arrives to save the day, again,” he mumbled, blinking, and let his head fall into the cup of Shou’s hand.

“Stop talking nonsense, and tell me what happened,” Shou said and gave Rin a little shake. Clearly, something was wrong, even if no one had stabbed Rin. Though Shou would have understood if they were tempted to. “Did the crazy village priests follow you? Did you follow _them_?”

Rin had shown some perfunctory interest in the village’s dark rituals, but after Shou fought off their most rabid warrior priests, there didn’t seem to be anyone left worth calling a villain of Rin’s caliber. Not that Shou really understood what his uninvited companion was looking for in the first place.

“Not the villagers,” Rin said, and rubbed his nose against Shou’s palm. “The Council.”

Shou jerked his hands away in surprise, letting Rin’s head fall back to the ground. “Kasei Meikou. Were they looking for this thing?” His gaze involuntarily turned to his bags, among them the highly conspicuous bundle with Seven Piericing Songs.

Rin propped himself weakly on one elbow and cleared his throat. “Regrettably, the young lady on their demonic payroll did not stay for small talk.”

Shou briefly wondered how the bug lord even recruited so many young women into his service, but if Rin had any theories on that, Shou was sure he didn’t want to hear them.

“What did she do?” Shou didn’t like the sheen of sweat that broke on Rin’s face from this little effort. A poison fever?

“Took me by surprise, I’m afraid,” Rin said, with a small dismissive movement of his shoulders. “She, ah, attempted to interrogate me.”

“Interrogate you? Isn’t this where you talk a lot of nonsense at people, and they start following you around like faithful disciples or sworn enemies?” Insufferable as his mouth was, it was possibly the most effective of Rin’s weapons. Definitely his favourite.

Rin’s features briefly arranged themselves into an expression of modest pleasure, before he turned his gaze away, pretending to find something of great interest in the embroidery along his sleeve. “Her preferred method was doing it under influence,” he said. “It was rather rude of her. She didn’t even pause for introductions.”

Poison, then. “Are you in any imminent danger? Don’t you have your medicine box on you?”

“It has nothing suitable to my ah, situation,” Rin said carelessly. “My best bet would have been a concoction mixed from the wyrm’s ichor, but I used it all up to make your antidote.”

Some dreadful feeling, not unlike a sense of obligation to Rin, churned in Shou’s stomach.

“I hope you are feeling properly indebted to me for my earlier generosity. We are blessed with bonds of a friendship both fortuitous and selfless.” Rin oozed the maximum honeyed insincerity he was capable of in his current state, and Shou immediately stopped feeling guilty. 

“What is done is done,” he said pragmatically. “What do you need now? My wounds have closed up, I could go look for ingredients you need to replace.” He didn’t fancy doing it in the dead of night, but if he had to, he would. It was one thing to hope that Rin would trip over his attitude and fall into a ditch; it would be another to leave him like this.

“You don’t happen to have arranged comfortable longings at a luxury inn within a walking distance from here, have you?” Rin said. “Failing that, anywhere out of the way of minions of the dark will do. It would work just as well to wait until the toxin runs its course.” His eyes were wandering wildly, lips parched. Shou suspected severe dehydration.

“Right. Can you walk?”

Evidently, Rin couldn’t. Shou sighed, picked up the noisy sword and his bag and arranged them on his back, and knelt to scoop Rin into his arms.

“My hero,” the insufferable man murmured, draping his arms on Shou’s shoulders. “Noble Sir Shou.”

Shou rolled his eyes and hoisted him up. His knees complained under under the strain -- despite the cultivated air of a bird from a royal menagerie, Rin weighed like a man of his size and frame should. With him pressed to Shou’s chest and mumbling a string of nonsense somewhere into his neck, Shou could feel the feverish heat emanating off the man even through all the layers of silk and fur between them. 

Holding tight to his uncooperative burden, Shou slowly started walking.

A shallow cave by a stream running south was not, perhaps, quite the luxury accommodation that Rin had requested, but it was sheltered from the wind and prying eyes by the riverside growth.

“Here’s your shelter, your majesty, and enough fresh water to drink or drown in, whatever is your preference,” he said, setting Rin down with more care than he deserved. His face had lost its usual pallor, and there was a high color in his cheeks. Shou put his palm on Rin’s brow again, pushing some of the hair off his face. Strands of it stuck damply to Rin’s skin. His breath was coming out in hot puffs, and a shiver racked through his limbs.

Bug council poison didn’t look like much fun.

“Is there anything I can do to make it better?” he volunteered with reluctance.

Rin let out a high-strung laugh. “No.” From a pile of things Shou dumped at Rin’s feet, Seven Piercing Songs echoed it with a discordant note of its own. “Not unless you have more secret powers than you’ve capably demonstrated so far.” 

Shou filed a futile silent complaint with the heavens, which kept on sending him high-maintenance companions, and turned to put some water to boil. The damn man was not offering anything useful, so some tea wouldn’t hurt, he decided.

He tried to empty his mind as he watched the bubbles slowly break the surface of the water, but zen was hard to come by when he could still hear Rin’s ragged breathing. Soon enough, the soothing fragrance of steamed tea leaves washed over his senses, and Shou gave up on pretending he was unconcerned. 

“Do you want to talk about what happened?” He extended the question like a peace offering, because the man loved nothing better than to listen to himself talk.

Rin stopped trying to find a comfortable lying position and sat huddled instead, pulling the knees to his chest. “This account would not cast me in a favourable light, I’m afraid. I have been careless. I only rely on the generosity of your spirit to keep this within the confidences of our friendship...”

Shou snorted. With much bullshit coming out of him, Rin was probably more alive than dead, after all. “Did she best you at your game?”

“My game usually has a little more finesse than that,” Rin sniffed and pulled his cloak a little closer around his shoulders. “She showed up in a cloud of purple smoke, which I thought was an appropriately dramatic entrance, if you are an aspiring minion of the dark. Not a novel choice, perhaps, but acceptable for someone of her caliber. I didn’t give it much thought at first, dismissing it as purely a fashion choice.” A visible shiver went through him, and Rin hid his hands in his wide sleeves. “Which it was, of course. But by the time I had realized that the smoke carried magical toxins as well, they were already starting to take effect.”

“Were you sizing her up as your next project, then? Is that why it took you so long?” Shou kept his voice light, but his eyes were trained on Rin’s body for further symptoms. What was a shiver in one moment could become frothing convulsions the next. There was no way to know for sure, with magical poisons. 

“She was enterprising enough, I admit, but a little too energetic for my tastes.” Rin pulled a hand from his sleeve to flick it dismissively, then pulled it back again. “And my pause wouldn’t have been a problem, had I not chosen next to teach the young lady some manners. To let her taste what she was serving the others.” 

Coming from a man who had never had a taste of his own medicine, that was -- classic Rin, actually. So Shou said nothing.

“Ordinarily, a mirroring spell is the most useful little trick for such occasions,” Rin continued his defense, “but I had not accounted for one small detail. The purple smoke had a second magical property. Instead of reversing the direction of her spell, it absorbed mine like an injection of extra power, and affected me with a compounded effect.”

“You sound way too much like you approve of the idea,” Shou turned away to hide the twitch of his lips, and poured Rin some tea.

“It’s a good one, with the caveat that I should not be on the receiving end of it.” Rin’s reached his hands out to take the cup, but they trembled so badly that Shou swatted them away and seated himself next to Rin. He didn’t want to take care of hot water burns on top of magical poisoning, so he slowly moved the cup to Rin’s lips himself. Rin’s pupils were still blown wide, and a pulse at his neck beat furiously.

“Are you in pain?” he asked gruffly. 

Rin’s teeth clattered against the clay edges of the cup, and he turned his face away. “Not exactly.” The gesture would have been awkward and self-conscious, had he been anyone but the flashiest man in two kingdoms. 

Shou thought again about the rare ingredient that went into the dressings for his poison arrows. He would have gladly traded it back, even at the risk of an inflamed wound, if only he could stop feeling that Rin’s situation was his responsibility.

Shou abruptly realized that he still had no clue as to what Rin’s situation was, exactly.

“That magical toxin,” he said, putting the cup down. “You never told me what it did. Is it a numbing agent? Does it mess with your senses?”

Rin ceased all twitching. His pupils blew even wider than seemed possible.

“I was hoping you’d never ask.” He slowly exhaled, and fixed his blackened eyes on Shou. Somewhere behind his back, the nuisance sword made a strangled sound. “It works like a powerful aphrodisiac.”

“Aphrodisiac,” Shou repeated. Rin’s eyes were still on his face. The burden of his undivided attention felt like a tangible weight resting on Shou’s shoulders.

“The lady didn’t want to leave the matter of enthralling people to chance,” Rin said lightly. “An altogether understandable reaction.” His nonchalance was somewhat undermined by the shivers racking his body.

Shou sighed and offered him the rest of the tea, but Rin refused it with a headshake. Shou drained the leftovers and stood to put away the cup and get ready for the night. He rearranged his bags into something that could pass for a pillow, and after some deliberation, laid Seven Piercing Songs down within easy reach. Turning to look at Rin, who was observing his ministrations in uncharacteristic wide-eyed silence, he stretched down on the ground, and said, “What are you looking at? Come over. If your teeth clatter any louder, I won’t be able to sleep.”

Slowly and carefully, Rin settled a little closer to him, arranging his layers of silk in some fastidious order apparent only to him. But shivers soon won over, and he pressed his back into Shou, allowing his ki-fuelled body heat to envelope them both.

“Ever so selfless, Sir Shou,” Rin spoke faintly into his furs. “Aren’t you afraid I would take advantage of the nobility of your spirit?”

The shivering had subsided enough to let him talk without teeth clattering, but his breath remained very shallow, and the vein at his temple still beat at an alarming rate. With his face turned away and hands stuffed firmly into the sleeves of his coat, Rin looked meek and uncomfortable. Clearly a formidable danger to both spirit or body.

“Is this helping?” Shou asked, taking off his overcoat to drape it over Rin.

Rin made a strained, noncommittal noise. “The drug does not incentivize restraint, I’m afraid.”

Shou frowned at the back of Rin’s head. “Do you mean, the more you try to resist it, the worse it kicks in?”

“I will bear the burden of my errors with grace, and h-humility.” Tiny spasms went through his body, and Shou heard a slow, hissing exhale through clenched teeth.

Humility never suited Rin anyway, Shou thought, accepting what was going to come.

“Where is wyrm’s ichor when one needs it,” he sighed, grabbed Rin by the shoulders to flip him onto his back, and leaned in to cover Rin’s mouth with his own.

There was a small sound of surprise that got swallowed in the slow movements of their mouths. Rin’s lips were parched, and pliant, and silent -- he opened up to the kiss wordlessly, wondrously, and it wasn’t until a fever-hot exhalation washed over his face that Shou realized that Rin had been holding his breath.

Shou pulled away to look questioningly at the man. Rin’s pupils were still blown wide like there was no light left in the world. Stricken silence was a strange look on Rin, too, an abnormality much weirder than magical purple mist poison. 

Being taken by surprise twice in the same day must have really bruised his ego, Shou supposed.

“Objections?” he asked, patiently. At the end of the day, it was Rin’s call to accept or reject the offer of help.

The word broke the silent spell, and Rin blinked off his wide-eyed paralysis. “You surpass all expectations, don’t you,” he murmured as if to himself. “I entrust myself to your capable hands, once again.” 

Shou rolled his eyes in annoyance, but it was a familiar, comfortable feeling, so he leaned in again to nip at Rin’s lower lip.

This time around, Rin’s meekness felt more deliberate. No longer a product of surprise, his soft yielding felt more akin to his usual state of observation. He liked to pretend inaction as a way to encourage you to make a move first, and reveal your hand. 

In nine cases out of nine, it was an invitation to stab yourself in the same hand. Except the joke was on Rin this time, as Shou had no intentions beyond offering a relief. Good luck trying to undermine an ulterior motive that didn’t exist.

Rin must have felt the curl of his smile, because his next breath came out distinctly annoyed, and he changed his tactics. Shou felt a scrape of teeth, heard a flutter of fabric, and a hand landed in his hair, on his nape, pulling him down even closer, with a force and at an angle that gave Rin better access. 

A smile became a huff. Let Rin try to boss him about. Unhurried, Shou turned his face towards Rin’s neck, following the curve of his jaw. 

“This is too much --” hair, he wanted to say, because the silver strands were sticking haphazardly to heated skin, but there was also an abundance of feathers and fur and layers, so Shou settled for “--clothing.”

Rin’s head had fallen back, his neck straining against the ridiculous strap of leather looped around it. His chest was rising and falling at a rapid rate. 

“Tragic,” he said, in breezy tones that suggested there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. 

Figured.

“We’ll just have to keep them on, then,” Shou said with a straight face. He heard the sword chime somewhere behind his back, in sync with the amusement he was holding back.

He leaned in to nuzzle the skin behind Rin’s ear, letting the fine hair tickle his cheek. After all, he was not the one with an immediate problem.

Rin’s straining acquired a desperate quality. 

“Perhaps,” he panted, “there is some room for improvement in my situation, after all. You would not let a friend suffer needlessly, would you?”

Shou considered putting off anything further until Rin actually consented to speak straight, but then shrugged off the thought. He wasn’t in the mood to wait here until they both died of old age.

First went the idiotic leather strap. The skin at Rin’s throat was silk smooth, but the tendons beneath it kept straining under Shou’s fingers like iron cords under pressure. Shou’s hand moved lower, pushing away the layers of silk -- the zipper on his white shirt seemed to move on its own, barely needing a pull -- and soon enough, he could freely map all of Rin’s upper body with his hands.

It was a good upper body, all in all. 

“I see you didn't lose your form when you traded swordsmanship for a career of blowing smoke into people’s eyes,” Shou said. He pressed a hand just below Rin’s ribcage and transferred some of his weight on it, to make a point. Rin’s stomach muscles clenched and tightened under his palm as they solidly supported his weight, and Shou grinned.

“Swords are boring,” Rin said, and twisted in Shou’s arms in a way that mysteriously rearranged the position of their limbs, with Shou’s hands now framing his hips, and Rin’s arms trying to slink under Shou’s clothes. “Let’s not talk about swords.”

Shou emphatically agreed, but it wouldn’t do to say that out loud. Rin’s head was big enough as it was. 

The day, however, had still more challenges for Rin in store. 

“These tassels are a problem.” Rin batted ineffectively at the elaborate cords that tied Shou’s outfit to his chest.

“Your personality is a problem,” said Shou, with feeling. 

He did, however, loosen his own fastenings with a few economical motions and let Rin take over from there. They were practical and reliable clothes, surely not too complex to navigate for a man of Rin’s sophistication in fashion.

Speaking of. Shou paused to contemplate Rin’s hair ornaments while Rin tried to manipulate the positions of Shou’s hands to his liking. Despite all the tossing and turning, the elaborate headdress was still immaculately in place down to the last sharp icicle.

Dark magic, Shou decided. Better not to go there. He would probably get zapped if he tried to get them out of Rin’s hair. 

Rin must have interpreted this brief minute of contemplation as a grave slight to the urgency of his situation, because his body moved in a demanding sinuous movement calculated to bring them in contact with each other in all the strategic places.

“I was thinking,” he said.

Shou’s focus snapped back to him in alarm. Rin smiled beatifically, encouraging the attention.

“We should take the maximum advantage of the situation,” he continued.

There was a whole world of things Shou could have said to this, starting with the fact that Rin could not have what he wanted at all times, but he propped a hand above the man’s shoulder and let him continue. 

“I’m going to make an educated guess here that you would prefer not to be caught by surprise in a, ah, similar situation.” Rin licked his lips in a manner that suggested there was very little he regretted about his current situation. With a familiar sense of misgiving, Shou nodded. “While my knowledge of magic has much yet in the way of improving, I am not entirely bereft of the expertise in the area of magical remedies.”

A part of Shou marvelled at how even a magically induced sex frenzy could not stop the man from lecturing with overwhelming verbosity and insincerity.

“Would you rather we stopped now to discuss that?” Shou made a motion to extract his hands from Rin’s hair, which was hastily aborted by Rin’s grabbing his wrists in an iron hold and locking them in place. 

“The two are not mutually exclusive,” Rin hastened to assure him. “It’s very basic, really -- to build up an immunity to a substance, you have to let your body work up a defense against it by ingesting a small amount of it. Take poison to fight poison.”

“Didn’t you blather on a while ago that magical remedies bypassed all that because ki flow can carry the right essences directly into affected areas?”

“I am -- surprised you remember.” Rin’s eyes flashed, before his unreasonably long eyelashes hid them from view. Shou must have gotten affected by this funny business, because for a moment there, Rin looked infinitesimally less annoying than usual. “You are on the right track. Ki is the crucial element, and ordinarily it works as an ideal tool to administer magical remedies. However, we don’t seem to be entirely compatible in that regard.”

Shou didn’t know in which other possible regards Rin had thought they were compatible. Shou could name approximately zero, if asked. “So whatever immunity you build up, you can’t share it over ki flows because your ice ki is useless to me,” he summed it up. 

“As always, I appeal to the generosity of your noble spirit when faced with my shortcomings,” Rin murmured. “But should you choose to strengthen your defences against this threat, as your devoted friend, I would be happy to help.”

Helpfulness was oozing off Rin’s face. He was the very picture of helpfulness, and Shou’s first instinct was to wipe it off.

On the other hand, if choosing between an unknown evil and one as familiar as an old stain…

“Oh, what the hell,” Shou breathed out. “Do your wor-- do your thing, then.”

“My pleasure.” Rin grip slipped from Shou’s wrists, and his arms snaked around Shou’s neck, bringing him closer. Their lips brushed together again, and Rin kissed him slowly and languidly, as if there was nothing in it for him than the simple pleasure of it. Shou didn’t believe it for a minute.

And true to himself, the very moment that Shou was lulled by the motion and the rhythm of breath warming up between them, Rin drew blood.

The sinking of his teeth into the soft flesh was so sudden that Shou’s senses didn’t have the time to switch to alarmed mode. The jolt that went through him was more heat than anger, but he pulled away to give Rin an accusing look.

Rin stared back at him, implacable like the moon. 

“It kicks in rather fast,” he offered instead of an explanation.

His lip, too, was bleeding. Shou raised a hand and slowly moved a thumb over Rin’s mouth, wiping off the drop of blood that swelled at the cut.

In a birdlike rapid motion, Rin turned his head and caught Shou’s thumb between his teeth.

Everything after that point happened like a landslide, dragging him downhill in a roaring mass of rocks.

There was nothing languid or indulgent about this anymore. There was pushing and pulling, and stumbling around suddenly unbearably complicated knots in their clothes. There were teeth in places that sent hot spikes along Shou’s spine, and solid muscle holding him in place. There were his hands in Rin’s hair, pulling at it to angle his neck just so. A hand that must have been Shou’s own knocked the metal crown off Rin’s head to get a better grab at his hair, to expose more of the taut pale skin at his throat.

Probably not cursed after all, flickered a thought before blinking out into the darkness.

Things only registered in passing, like scenery during a mad horseback dash through the night. At some point, they must have flipped their positions, because Shou was on his back, chest heaving, and a cascade of white hair was cutting off his view of the world, and air supply, and power of speech as his body thrust upwards. Blink, and his entire field of vision was taken by the sight of his own fingers digging painfully into the white skin of Rin's hips, another hand trailing along his trembling spine in a soothing motion. Another blink, and he was on his back on the silks again, and the body against his own was reacting to his every move like it was letting him shape it.

His last thought before he succumbed to sleep was that he would not be able to say if these things happened all at the same time, one after another, or not at all. He dreamt of absolutely nothing.

When dawn came, Shou was not there to see it.

In fact, by the time he opened his eyes, the sun was high in the sky, and it pained him terribly.

“Should have guessed there would be a hangover,” he groaned, closing his eyes against the rays of sunlight lancing through the cave’s mouth. On sheer willpower alone, he picked up his clothes and walked himself to the steam to wash up and clear his head. After that, he dressed carefully, untangled and tied back his hair, and only then did he turn back to look at Rin.

Fresh as a daisy and packed back into his silks and furs, Rin sat not far from the cave entrance, tapping absently at his pipe.

“It is a lovely day,” he said courteously, dipping his head and gesturing at the pastoral view in front of him.

“Can’t say the same about you,” Shou muttered half-heartedly, picking up their bags and the twanging sword. His limbs felt heavy and his joints ached.

“Residual effects of magical detoxing,” Rin nodded, and offered him a small unlabelled box. “They will wear off quicker if you take this remedy --”

“I think I’ve had enough medicine for now.” He firmly pushed away the box and its contents. “This is nothing a good day of walking won’t shake off.”

“As you please.” 

There were no signs of yesterday’s fever in Rin’s countenance, which was rather annoyingly clear and smooth, so Shou saw no reason to dawdle. He gestured for Rin to go ahead, kicked some dirt over the ashes of yesterday’s fire, and soon enough they were back on the same road.

The walk helped clear his head and eased most of the strains and aches that lingered in his muscles. The day was rapidly improving, if he didn’t count the fact that he still had no idea why Rin was tagging along on the journey. It was not the first time the thought crossed his mind, and not the first time he arrived at the same conclusion that he was not going to like the answer.

Better to enjoy the bliss of ignorance for a little while more. The day was warm, his shoes were dry, and a beautiful song accompanied their steps --

“Wait a minute.” Shou frowned and reached out to check on Seven Piercing Swords, for once still tightly bound and silent. “This music is not coming from this sword.”

“And astute observation, most honorable Sir Shou,” Rin inclined his head slowly and pointed his pipe to the grove on their left. “I believe it is another weapon that’s responsible for this melody, and one dearly familiar to you.”

And indeed, like a poorly timed answer to his earlier idle prayers, it was Rou Fu Yo in person, marching along a winding path that joined their road from the west. His fingers were absently touching the strings of his chatty pipa, bringing forth the music that had reached them long before the musician did.

“My man, my old friend, of course it is you we find at the end of the journey!” Ryouga yelled at them, killing the music and earning itself an admonishing dissonant chord. “This one’s gut feeling was right!”

“You were looking for me?” Shou asked. Rou shook his head and glared at Rin, who was offering his most elaborate assurances of mutual pleasure at this meeting. “For this guy, then?”

Rou’s fingers tightened against the pipa strings, and Ryouga wailed. “Careful there! And that would be a no. We were following the rumors about a legendary truth-telling, demon-slaying erhu.”

“Erhu? Is that what this thing is?” asked Shou at the same time as Rin said, “Truth-telling, how fascinating.”

Rou gave Rin another stink-eye, and carefully took the bundle with Seven Piercing Songs into his hands. To Shou’s mind, it still didn’t look much like either a sword or an erhu, but he was willing to take his friend’s word on it.

“Isn’t she a beauty,” Ryouga gushed, once Rou unwrapped the erhu and started testing its strings and edges. “Slim, deadly, gorgeous, enough to give any honest man thoughts -- hey, stop hitting me, master! I can’t dodge it!”

Under Rou’s fingers what was an ugly sword transformed into a beautiful instrument, and the sounds his touch elicited were very different to its usual twanging at odd moments. Rou was not playing any specific melody. He would pluck a few strings, turn his head to the side to listen to reverberations of each sound until it died, and play another harmonious chord again.

“It seems the fine instrument is regrettably out of tune.” Rin’s commentary came coated in staggering amounts of condescending sympathy. “How disappointing, isn’t it.”

The erhu twanged angrily, surprising Rou enough to give him pause. “Did you hear that?” Ryouga’s excitement reached a new pitch. “That was totally her own doing, it must be how she expresses herself! What a babe! Say it, girl! Speak your truths!”

Rin busied himself with fussing over his sleeves. “Seems like a rather unreliable instrument to me. But I’m sure with enough time to tune it back in order, your friend can figure out how it works.”

Seven Piercing Songs gave out another discordant screech under the musician’s fingers, and Rou looked at Rin like it was his fault -- which, to be fair, it likely was, regardless of the circumstances.

“Come on, Sir Shou, let’s make haste.” Rin swept off an invisible dust mote off his coat and bowed an ungenerous goodbye. “The sword has clearly found a good place to be, and we can move on. Great deeds await ahead.”

“Do they await _us_?” Shou stressed the last word, but Rin was deaf and blind to theatrics he was not a producer of.

“Technicalities, my friend.” With a sweep of his coat, he marched ahead as if he had some heroic quest to fulfil. 

Shou sighed, and followed.


End file.
